This evening, at Shaya’s “Men’s Learning Night”, we were in Pirke Avos, 4:17, where it says that there are 3 crowns: Torah, Kahuna, and Malchus. And that the crown of a good name is the best of them all. We discussed what a crown might refer to. It was decided (amongst us) that a crown must refer to a particular public image that is regarded highly. So a person who has a “crown of Torah” might be a well-known Torah scholar, etc.
It then came up that having such a crown would denote that the person has a great deal of honor. It was brought up that honor could be a negative trait, as it says in a different place in Pirke Avos “Jealousy, lust, and the pursuit of honor remove a person from the world.” It was then suggested that honor could also have a good place and was proven by the following:
In Parshas Balak, when Bilaam HaRasha set out to curse the Jewish people, the Gemara tells us that he felt capable of doing this because he knew the moment of the day when Hashem has a particular wrath such that a curse would be a effective. Bilaam had assumed that he would wait for this particular moment, then say his curse to the Jewish people, and it would work! But, to Bilaam’s dismay Hashem did not have this moment of wrath at this particular moment of the day that Bilaam went to curse, so rather the curse was a blessing.
The Gemara asks “How long was this moment” (using the word “Rega” for moment). The Gemara answers the amount of time that it takes to say the word “Rega”… about a second.
As explained by Rabbi Wagensberg, Tosefos ask “What kind of curse did Bilaam say in the amount of time that it takes to say ‘Rega’?!” And Tosefos answer that he said “Kalem” – כלמ – which means “destroy them”. Then Tosefos ask “So if he didn’t say ‘Kalem’”, but rather he blessed them instead, what did he say?” And they answer that he said to them “Melech” – מלכ – which is “king”.
Now, I understand why “Kalem” is an effective curse. He wants to curse and he says “destroy them!” It makes sense. But what kind of blessing is “Melech”?! How does calling a nation “king” bless them?
The answer that Rabbi Wagensberg gives is that we should look at the words themselves. The word Kalem is an acronym for the words “Kaved, Leib, Moach”. This is in contrast to the word Melech which is the same letters in reverse order giving “Moach, Leib, Kaved”.
The curse would have been that Bilaam would be saying “Kalem”… these Jewish people operate under “Kaved, Leib, Moach”! That’s “liver, heart, brain”, or what they represent “honor, emotion, intellect.” In other words, he would be saying “They are lead by their honor, which causes their pride to swell influencing their emotions, which in turn affects their intellect.” This is a curse as we are supposed to strive to be in control of our emotion and not the other way around, G-d forbid. The other way is “destruction” – “Kalem”. Instead he blesses us though, saying “Melech” that we are (or at least should strive to be) a people who put our intellect first and that controls our emotions, which in turn leads to us having some degree of honor from the right choices that we’ve made.
I would suggest here that the “Kalem” kind of honor – the honor that influences emotion, which in turn influences the intellect is what drives a person from the world. It “destroys” somebody, G-d forbid. The “Melech” type of honor however is something that is good as it comes as the natural consequence of person who makes choices based on their intellect, which controls the desires of their heart.
The question still remains “Why Melech?” Why say the word “king”? I understand that the acronym tells us something, but what does a literal king have to do with this state of putting one’s intellect before one’s emotion? Recalling the beginning of this post where we understood that a person who wears a crown is a person who has recognizable honor, it is noteworthy that the person who literally would wear a physical crown is the king – the Melech.
And so this is a reason for the allusion of a king – that in order that we should G-d Willing fulfill this blessing we should use our intellect to decide how and where our emotions should be directed, leading to us attaining this good honor that will make it so that we may collectively wear the crown of Malchus, which should G-d Willing usher in the Moshiach who will be the Melech of Israel. After all Bilaam prophesied a great deal about the time of Moshiach as well…